Today’s motto:
“I am a firm believer in black magic. That’s the only way you can go with computers. Sacrifice the goat and hope the blood doesn’t get on your shoes.”
-Nic McPhee

Scenario 1: During the regular Tuesday night chat, Sekhmetsat reports being able to log in to chat, but not actually type anything once there. Three or four tries later, the problem mysteriously clears up. Sekhmetsat is using IE and running Windows.

Scenario 2: John reports Word opens up with the e-mail toolbar only despite repeated attempts to correct which toolbars are showing and where they are located. He asks me to take a look, fixes them one last time, closes Word, and opens it again to illustrate the problem. Miraculously, the problem has fixed itself.

Scenario 3: Koi reports that after a full-screen application closed, her Windows taskbar has disappeared and will not come back. No amount of fiddling with settings or attempting to resize it back into place works; it’s simply gone. When she presses the Windows key on her keyboard, the Start menu comes up, but the taskbar does not appear with it. She reboots, and the problem fixes itself.

All three of these have occurred in the last 13-14 hours (which, considering I was asleep for 8 of those, is really even less time than it sounds like).

I swear some days I think the goat’s the only way to go with Microsoft!

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I am normally a very bad voter, which is to say I don’t do my homework and then wind up not voting at all because I really don’t want to cast an uninformed vote. So today, since I’m so scatterbrained I can’t concentrate on work anyway, I thought I’d… Well, do my homework. Read up on the candidates, especially for the Presidential election. I happily trotted off to Project Vote Smart, figuring I could get good info there.

*sigh*

It’s a very nice concept, but it really doesn’t have much information about what the major Presidential candidates really want to do with this country. Neither of them filled out the NPAT survey summarizing their views and goals. There are speeches, but I really don’t have time to read through all of those, you know? There’s biographical info and fun facts, but that doesn’t say diddly about what direction they want to take this country. I don’t really know what to make of the endorsement information or campaign spending. Special Interest groups and voting record–well, the info is there for Kerry at least, and it’s somewhat helpful. (I guess since Bush went straight to governor and from there straight to President he doesn’t really have a voting record, and that’s where the special interests info is pulled from as well, it seems.) However, I’m not familiar with all the groups listed, and in order for this section to tell me what Sen. Kerry thinks of an issue, there has to be a special interest group concerned with it… As for voting records, I couldn’t possibly sort through all that, although I’ll probably look through the things most important to me at least.

Well, there *are* links to their official campaign Web sites. So I thought I’d take a look-see there.

Boy, was that a bad move.

Instantly I was assaulted by the very thing which often makes me reluctant to do much research into the candidates: good, old-fashioned, down-and-dirty mudslinging. Instead of telling me what their positions were, the candidates each seemed bent on telling me how awful the other was. It reminded me of nothing so much as a pair of ten-year-old boys arguing about who’s uglier or some such nonsense. Kerry’s site wasn’t as bad as Bush’s, but it was still there. I think the only phrase to describe what I feel about these things is: Utterly. Disgusted.

So. What I’ve got to go on is a lot of largely-confusing information overload and gossip. Gossip, frankly, isn’t actually doing Kerry any favors other than pointing out that he’s not Bush. I don’t have a whole lot to go on here, but what I’ve got isn’t great; I’ve heard he intends to continue carrying out this ridiculous war on terrorism and generally playing world police, which I disagree with. (And which is a whole other rant.) So… Assuming that gossip is correct, which it may not be, do I vote for the lesser of two evils (ew) or do I “throw away” my vote on a third-party candidate and risk that Bush might win because the people opposing him were too divided to agree on a viable candidate (also ew)?

I’ve never been fond of the way elections wind up as a race to see who can discredit whom first, but I’m even less happy about this one than usual. Matter of fact, I hate it. Loathe it, with a passion. Because there is no good answer here, as I see it right this second. There may turn out to be no choice which will allow me to walk away from the polls feeling like I’ve done the right thing.

The first Presidential debate is in two nights. Maybe Kerry will turn out to be better than gossip (and mind you I don’t mean gossip from the Bush camp here) makes him out to be. I need to try to keep an open mind at least until I see what he does there. I will say, though, that things aren’t looking good.

(Of course it’s always going to be difficult for me to believe that stodgy old politicians really have half a clue about the way my generation wants this country run anyway, but again that’s a different rant. And I guess maybe it ties into the recent rash of celebrity governors, doesn’t it?)

Ooooh boy am I rambling. I’ll sign off now… Expect more on this subject after the debate, though.

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http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

For those of you who, like me, use Firefox but are clueless about when new versions come out… Version 1.0 is out now. I’ve been using it for a few days and it seems to work wonderfully. (And it will import all your settings from the older versions of Firefox, although you do have to re-do your themes and extensions.)

A quick note, though–although the BlogThis extension is not listed in the “1.0″ section of the extensions page, it does appear to work just fine with the new version. (In fact, I’m using it to post this entry!) I don’t know whether this is the case with other extensions or not.

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Soooo congested… Out of breath from walking 50 feet on a firm, level surface… Can’t breathe… I took a decongestant and–OK, I think I may have treated the wrong symptom. Because my NOSE is perfectly uncongested now and I’m sniffle-free. But that does zip, zero, zilch, nada, nothing for the fact that I can’t draw a proper breath; my lungs are still congested. Geesh. I tried a mug of hot breathe-easy tea, but that doesn’t seem to have helped either. And I don’t have any more teabags of it with me anyhow, they’re all at home.

Speaking of home, part of me just wants to go there, so that I can take a Dayquil to see if that helps and then take a nap to sleep off the drowsy effects of the Dayquil. But I should at least try to get something done here at work… And it’s not like this is preventing me from doing that, since my job is a desk job.

I will undoubtedly survive; I just had to bitch about it first. *G*

On the bright side, my Flapdoozy arrived last night. It’s every bit as cute, useful, and perfect as it sounded. Yay!

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(Link to CNN story about Paris Hilton’s book removed because the page is no longer available.)

I’m largely uninterested in this story (I tend to agree with Alton Brown’s comments on this one–see link in sidebar), but I do have just a one comment. Why is it that I never see a picture of Paris in which she is tastefully dressed, much less flatteringly or even beautifully? Every single picture I’ve seen, she’s been wearing something completely trashy. I mean, really trashy. Like not even “please feast your eyes on every possible inch of my skin” trashy, but rather “I’ve never sewn before, but I thought I’d try to alter this bargain-basement sackcloth to fit me, don’t you think it came out well” trashy. The article actually refers to her clothing style as “slut wear”… In quotes, as though it were lifted from something she’d said. Surely it can’t be intentional?

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This is a little bizzare.

So this morning I brought in leftover pancakes and bacon for breakfast. (I eat breakfast at work.) This means that (unlike days when I have oatmeal with dried fruit in it) I have no fruit to help me get going in the morning. We have juice at home, but no convenient way to transport a single serving. So I decided to buy a bottle of juice from the vending machine downstairs. There are at least buttons for Minute Maid apple, orange, and cranberry-grape… But when I try to get some juice I discover all three of those are sold out. Well, there’s lemonade, and that’s a fruit drink, right? So I get it.

I heat up my breakfast, open the lemonade, and sit down to enter it all into my FitDay records. This is when I come to a slightly shocking realization: Minute Maid lemonade is pretty much just unfizzy soda. It’s got sugars, sodium, and not much else. Now, I should have known better. I mean, it’s marketed with the sodas for a reason. But… What really got to me was that there’s not even any vitamin C in it. None at all.

Think about that for a few minutes. This is a beverage supposedly made from citrus fruit. Granted that you don’t use much lemon juice to make lemonade (proportional to the water, anyway), but… Okay, according to FitDay’s stuff even a single fluid ounce (juice of half a medium-to-large lemon) has 13% of your daily vitamin C in it. (And that’s if it’s bottled. Fresh-squeezed has 23% per fluid ounce.)

How in the world do you make lemonade without vitamin C? No, don’t answer that… I don’t want to know. I had consumed maybe 6 oz of the bottle when I figured all this out. I poured the rest down the sink. A waste of 75 cents, maybe, but I just couldn’t bring myself to finish it. If I’m going to have a soda I at least want something fizzy, you know?

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MAC wanted to see the essays which previously inhabited the “Essay of the Month” section of my website (which, naturally, had not been updated for well over a year when I took it all down). Figured it wouldn’t hurt to just post them for all to see anyway. So here they are. They’re not fancified or anything; I apologize for the plain-Jane looks, but since they’re not staying up permanently I didn’t want to waste a whole lot of time on making them pretty.

Water Baby
Country Living
Patriotism
Self Portrait
Writer’s Block

(“Self-Portrait” is actually an older essay and not one written specifically for that version of my site, so MAC, you might have seen it already.)

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So it turns out that I may add to my list of “things I can’t do right” one more item: installing curtain rods. Yes, that’s right, the talent for putting four freaking nails in the wall appears to escape me.

Tim was bitching about this very same thing last night when we installed the double rod for the dining room, and I got on his case because “it’s just a curtain rod”. I’d like to officially and publicly apologize; I understand the frustration, now.

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Tim and I give money to our local PBS station, but we also donate our time when the pledge drives roll around. Three or four times a year, we volunteer to answer phones as a part of a group from the Civic Theater. (Usually, it’s us, Dad, and Frank.) It’s always an interesting experience. Take this time, for example.

Our shift covered two programs. The first hour of it was at the time when Lawrence Welk would normally be on. When we arrived, station personnel warned us that we would probably get some calls (from some of the more confused of the older set) wondering why Lawrence Welk was not on. We were even informed that “He’s dead, get over yourself” was not an appropriate answer. Sure enough, our first call… “I was just wondering… why the normal program… isn’t on?” At least the poor dear was polite about it, and understood fairly quickly when I told her that Lawrence would be back next week.

Our second call was no less interesting. It’s fairly standard that at least once during the evening we get a caller who isn’t calling to pledge, but rather to tell us that they think it’s horrible how PBS is always demanding money and they don’t think that their programming should be interrupted for this. Sure enough, the second call of the evening was a gentleman who was fairly upset over this exact subject. This always frustrates me to some extent. I look at network TV and see commercials interrupting the programming every fifteen minutes–or less!–demanding that you give these companies your money by buying their products. Is that really so much better than PBS, which interrupts programming only a few times a year and then only to ask for your support? Aside from the pledge drives, which are hardly happening constantly or anything, the only commercials on a PBS station (or at least on ours) are for programs on that station… And even those are between programs, not in the middle. Not to mention the quality of the programming… But now I’m starting to sound ilke a pledge drive myself.

Those two calls, though, seemed to take care of our non-pledge call quota for the evening. After that we had only pledge calls, and all of them seemed to be fairly enthusiastic about their giving. They’re the sort of people that really make answering phones for the pledge drive a rewarding experience. The first program we were answering for drew a large number of callers (their highest volume all day, I guess), most of whom were older and had some interesting stories to tell. Which they didn’t hestitate to do over the phone. Which is just fine by me.

The second program got us only one caller… But it was Fleetwood Mac Live in Boston, so at least we had good entertainment.

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I mentioned to Tim that I needed a new bag. Didn’t really expect to get budget allotted (Tim’s taking care of the money right now) for much more than a Wal-Mart Special. However, Tim surprised me by suggesting this:
Megatokyo Flapdoozy Bag

I love the concept–it’s going to be a good bag to take in to work (since my work environment is pretty casual), and it’s neither too big nor too small for my needs. And since I’m addicted to Megatokyo, I don’t mind the logo in the slightest. I just hope it’s got enough pockets.

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